How to use Instagram without hating your body

By Sam Downing| 1 year ago

Are you nourished by Instagram's pretty pictures — or do you feel like an ugly blob compared to the lithe, toned creatures in your feed?

After you’ve scrolled through Instagram, are you nourished by all the pretty pictures — or do you feel like an ugly blob compared to the lithe, toned creatures in your feed? If it’s the latter, you need to de-objectify yourself on social media.

That’s the message from the Butterfly Foundation, the Australian organisation for eating disorders and body image, which has commenced Love Your Body Week to encourage people to (this will shock you) love their bodies.

In practice, de-objectifying yourself basically means seeing yourself as more than just a body for others to fawn over on Instagram.

“Our fast-paced digital world is fuelled by highly influential images glorifying body objectification and promoting the social benefits of body obsession,” said Butterfly Foundation CEO Christine Morgan in a statement.

“We need to work together with young people to build a counter-movement that promotes true body confidence to head-off growth in anxiety and depression experienced by young people.”

The Butterfly Foundation cites an Australian-US study published earlier in 2017 as evidence of how damaging social media use can be: a survey of almost 300 women revealed that the more time you spend on Instagram, the more likely you are to see yourself as an object beholden to the “thin and toned” beauty ideal.

The research suggested Instagram “fitspiration” is particularly damaging — rather than promote fitness and health, fitspo just seems to make people feel their own bodies aren’t up to standard.

“These results suggest that Instagram use may negatively impact women’s appearance-related concerns and beliefs, particularly if they have internalised the beauty ideal and if they make appearance comparisons to others on Instagram,” concluded a statement from the research team.

One of their proposed solutions is media literacy programs to remind people that Instagram images are highly curated and not always reflective of reality.

But another of their recommendations is just good common sense: unfollow celebrity and fitspo accounts that make you feel bad about yourself, and instead “follow more Instagram accounts that post nonappearance-related images”. Translation: more puppies and travel photos and food.

Morgan stressed the problem isn’t so much with Instagram or social media itself, but “how people are prioritising social validation of their physical appearance”.

To counter this, the Butterfly Foundation is encouraging people to improve their body image by completing this sentence on social media: “My body is great because…”

Morgan’s offering? “My body is great because it is made up of about 37 trillion cells that work in perfect harmony to support my busy life.” Which is indeed pretty great.